


Mona Lisa Box

by tzzzz



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artificial Intelligence, Crossover, End of the World, M/M, Robot Sex, Robots, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzzzz/pseuds/tzzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney McKay is one of the geniuses who created Skynet. John Sheppard is sent back in time to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mona Lisa Box

**Author's Note:**

> If you've seen the Terminator movies but not the Sarah Connor Chronicles, then Cameron is a female robot ala Arnold in Terminator2, Vick is a bad terminator, whose memory chip Cameron stole. Derek is a guy from the future and Andy Goode builds a chess computer that might contribute to the creation of Skynet. If you haven't seen Terminator at all, then you'll be pretty confused. The title is a reference to Searle's Chinese Box thought experiment. Much thanks to kristories for the beta.

John wants to know how robots think about things. Cameron says that it's different. She doesn't want to say that her data processors store things according to mission objectives. Once a goal is met, the memories are transferred to a less active part of the hard drive. But there are other goals, not highly prioritized and sometimes self-determined, which never seem to end. In some cyclical states of parallel processing, Cameron wonders if the people who reprogrammed her installed these little tangents (or at least the capacity for them), or if all social units are this way.   
  
She watches Vick's memory files. He liked to sculpt. Or at least he pretended to. It was one of the things his wife loved about him. She said so and yet the memories are not filed with his memories of her. They are separate. Cameron thinks she knows what this means. She wants to ask John, but she's reluctant. She doesn't know why.  
  


***

  
  
Rodney McKay is a genius. He could do anything he wants. Judging by the number of government contracts and hot Air Force officers practically throwing themselves at him, a lot of people acknowledge his genius as fact. It's reassuring, but not helpful. He has concert tours, benefits, and practice with that mockery of an orchestra that calls itself the LA Philharmonic. Sometimes he wonders why he chose to stay out here in LA instead of moving back to New York. Boston and Harvard and MIT aren't that far away, after all, so he could keep up his hobbies. But there's something about the CalTech boys. Maybe it's the sun or the quaint suburban feel of Pasadena, but they seem happier, at least more willing to set aside the petty academic infighting that Rodney just doesn't have time for when faced with his brilliance.  
  
In New York, they'd want him to choose. But he can't choose. Science and the complex play of mathematical equations behind the notes write his music as much as he does. And yet he wouldn't be as good a scientist as he is without the art and patience he's learned with the piano. They are both essential parts of him and he could no more choose than willingly cut off a limb.  
  
Sometimes, however, he wishes that he were in New York, where at least the sycophants would appreciate him more for his talent than his bank account. He's tired of young little Hollywood dropouts throwing themselves at him because of that one article in  _The Advocate._  It's one of the few he hasn't had framed. Rodney doesn't care about Pride. He has plenty of other things to be proud of.  
  
So maybe, no matter how many twinks he can find to share his bed, he's a little lonely. Just a little.  
  


***

  
  
"What would you do?" John asks one day. "If I died, what would you do?"  
  
Cameron frowns a little, signaling to him that this question might take some additional processing time. "My primary objective would be impossible. I'm programmed to shut down, with no objectives to fulfill."  
  
"But would you? I mean, there are so many other things you could do. Maybe I wouldn't be around to lead, but you might still be able to stop Judgment Day."  
  
Cameron doesn't say what John told her more than a year ago, processor time. He said that Judgment Day was inevitable. Or at least he'd given up on trying to stop it. She doesn't know why. Skynet knows, maybe, but they took those memories. She often wishes they hadn't. The memories might have helped.   
  
John will have advisers that think about time travel. Some say to forget about these missions to the past, that they won't change to future of  _this_  reality, only create an alternate one where there is no Skynet. Others insist that Skynet wouldn't have sent that first Terminator back to kill John Connor unless it thought the future could be changed. She wonders why they think Skynet knows any better than they do.   
  
If the future can be changed, and if they stop Judgment Day, she should cease to exist. John Connor should cease to exist as well. Cameron's not sure how she feels about that.  
  


***

  
  
John Sheppard's name is meant to be ironic, he realizes. No terminator would be named after the leader of the human resistance. In his future, John is a reassuring name. It had been to Mitch and Dex and Holland, at least, before they'd found out and John had been forced to kill them.   
  
Irony is listed as one of Rodney McKay's interests on his Myspace page, along with puppies, kittens, rainbows, people who are not morons, and long walks on the beach. This is why John decides to get a job at a pet store in Santa Monica; which is unfortunate, because animals don't like him. Maybe they can smell the coltan or hear his processors quietly whirring. Or perhaps there is some base aspect about human beings that they can sense and John lacks. His kind were built by humans, perhaps they, too, are limited by the human perception of the world, unable to fool any other creature.  
  
John isn't sure where he should meet Rodney McKay. He's been to several of his concerts already, but the man never lets any fans get too close. It's not a good way to earn the man's confidence. Hanging around CalTech is no more effective. Rodney's visits are sporadic at best, and John's attempts to register as a graduate student there prove difficult without any work to show for himself. And despite assurances from John's co-workers at the pet store that he is in fact rather attractive, no matter how many hours he spends at Rodney McKay's favored coffee shop, the man just gulps down his Jamaican roasted double espresso latte and leaves, without a single glance in John's direction. Other than that, he's not sure where Rodney  _goes_  other than home, concerts, coffee, and work.   
  
Perhaps there's something he's doing wrong. No matter how much behavior he observes, he gets the sense that he's missing something. In the future, things will be less complicated. Sexual liaisons are a product of battle weariness or desperation. Here, there seem to be a thousand little rituals and rules. People can afford to be choosy, though John has trouble understanding why they should. Physical gratification seems to occur regardless of whom they're with.   
  
John decides that perhaps there's nothing to do but ask. He takes a walk along the beach, in preparation to share his like for it with Rodney. A woman comes up to him, as seems to be habitual.   
  
"Hello," she says. "I couldn't help but noticing you walking all by yourself."  
  
John nods. "I'm glad you noticed." If she hadn't, it might be difficult to get his answers.  
  
She laughs, leaning towards him. Her pupils dilate and her breathing speeds up by a few breaths per minute, heart rate as well. John knows the signals for attraction, just not the cause.   
  
"What made you come up to me just now?" he asks.  
  
"Like I said: I saw you. I thought you were cute."  
  
"Thank you." Manners are a basic part of John's social interaction package. "But do you think you could be more specific?"  
  
"You don't need to fish for compliments, honey," she croons.  
  
John isn't fishing. "I didn't mean to." Perhaps if she understood the context of his dilemma, she'd be more willing to help. "I'm trying to meet someone."  
  
"You just have," she smiles.  
  
John smiles back. "A different someone. I looked up what he likes on the internet. And I try to hang out where he likes to go, but he doesn't notice me."  
  
The woman sighs. "Why do all the pretty ones have to be gay?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Well, if he's oblivious, why don't you just go up to him and ask?"  
  
"I'm not sure that would be welcome." John used to have blond hair, blue eyes, and a different nose, but then he tried the direct approach. He'd also learned that in the context of Rodney McKay, sycophant can be a very dirty word.   
  
"Well then, you'll just have to meet him in sort of a romantic accident, like in the movies." The woman pauses, eyes following a jogger who passes by. "Well, it was nice talking to you."  
  
But John isn't done. He reaches out, grabbing her wrist and squeezing. "Which movie?"  
  
"I don't know. Please, mister, you're hurting me."  
  
"Which movie?"  
  
The woman's heart rate speeds up, and her eyes widen in fear. It's a simple emotion, one John's familiar with. "Any movie," she gasps. "Please."  
  
Her eyes are watering and John still doesn't understand, but he spots a policeman over her shoulder. John isn't worried about the police inferring with any of his mission objectives, but he remembers Mitch and Dex and especially Holland. He hadn't wanted to kill them. If he had done a better job of acting, he wouldn't have had to.  
  
"I'm sorry," he replies, pulling up his directory of idiomatic phrases. "See ya around."  
  
On his way back to the apartment, John uses the disassembled parts of an iPhone he installed in his secondary processor to Google Rodney McKay's favorite movies.  
  
 _Star Wars_  is interesting. He finally understands some of the references his human team used to make. But he's not sure how he can replicate fleeing the galactic empire as a romantic scenario.  _Star Trek_  has a various degrees of kissing, but John hasn't a clue where he can get some whales on short notice. And  _Batman_  has a disturbing tendency to never really get the girl.  
  
So the next day, he takes them all back to the video store and asks for something a little more romantic. He isn't particularly happy with how Casablanca turns out, but _Back to the Future_  explains everything. This "Florence Nightingale Effect" was powerful enough to make a woman break one of humanity's greatest biological taboos and attempt to mate with her son, and it's easy to replicate. All John has to do is get hit by a car.  
  


***

  
  
"Rodney McKay," Derek says.  
  
"Rodney McKay," Cameron replies.  
  
"Who's Rodney McKay?" Sarah asks.   
  
"He's the next guy on our list. He's high profile, so we were having trouble getting close to him. But he's going to be a critical contributor to the development of Skynet."  
  
John has already entered the name into his computer. "He's a concert pianist and composer. Are you sure you have the right guy?"  
  
"My source said that he was the one who really brought Skynet to life. He was the _artist_  behind the project."  
  
"So we kill him." If he's vital to the creation of Skynet, killing him will be an effective way to complete Cameron's secondary mission goal, assigned by young John Connor.  
  
"We're not killing anyone," Sarah says. She's using her serious voice, so Cameron nods.   
  
"We're definitely killing him," Derek tells her later.   
  


***

  
  
Rodney should know better by now. LA traffic is horrific at best, but he just has to swing home and grab his tux before the benefit. He knew he should have thrown it in the trunk this morning. Maybe if he calls Elizabeth, she'll stall for him. Rodney reaches for his phone, scrolling to try and find Elizabeth's number.  
  
"Come on, pick up," he says, looking down at the display to make sure he's got the number right.  
  
"Rodney? You had better not be calling to say you're stuck in traffic, again." She sounds angry, at least as angry as always-diplomatic Elizabeth is capable of sounding.  
  
"Um--"  
  
Rodney doesn't have time to get his excuse out, because just at that moment, he catches movement to his right and something large and black is shattering his windshield. "Oh my god." He slams on the brakes.  
  
"Rodney?" Elizabeth asks.  
  
"I have to go. I think I just hit somebody with my car."  
  
"Rodney! Are you really that desperate--" He hangs up on her, fighting his way out of his seat belt to run to the other side of the car and open the door. He lives on a quiet street. He didn't see anybody. It's like this guy fell out of a tree or something.  
  
"Are you okay?" he asks, realizing a minute later how stupid that sounds, considering the blood dripping all over his expensive Italian leather upholstery. "Sorry. Of course, you're not. I'm calling 911." He tries to dial, but he's inexplicably lost signal somehow.   
  
Rodney is hyperventilating now, noticing the huge dent in his front window frame where the guy must have hit his head. "Oh god, you've spilled your brains all over my car. Oh, god." This isn't supposed to happen to him. He's a genius. This is going to ruin his life. It's going to ruin the brainless man's life and he didn't mean to and... "I'll go get help. You just, um. You just stay here."  
  
Rodney nearly jumps out of his skin at the feel of a vice-like grip around his wrist.  
  
"Jesus Christ! What are you trying to do? Give me aneurysm? You're bleeding. God, you're bleeding. You have to let me go get help."  
  
"No." Rodney suddenly finds himself staring into the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes he's ever seen. The man's face is bloody, and he still has little pieces of glass sticking out of him in various places, but even despite that, he manages to be unspeakably attractive. "Oh god, I've just run over People's next Sexiest Man of the Year."  
  


***

  
  
Cameron is aware of John staring at her chest. It's not the first time. But she isn't expecting him to smile and say, "You look really beautiful."  
  
Beauty isn't something machines consider. Maybe Skynet does in the depths of its vast processors, but Cameron doesn't. She wonders if maybe Vick had an inkling of it in his sculptures, or if any humans found them beautiful. "Thank you," she replies. Sarah had taken her to buy this dress, making her "try on" several even though Cameron could tell which ones would fit just by looking. "I look right for attending a benefit?"  
  
John nods. He's angry that he's not allowed along, he'd told her. Cameron thinks it's because they might really kill Rodney McKay after all and Sarah doesn't want him to see. But Derek is staying here, so maybe not.  
  


***

  
  
"Oh god, I've just run over People's next Sexiest Man of the Year."  
  
John smiles, feeling the blood drip down to cover his teeth. Finally, a step in the right direction.  
  
"Please, stop that. It's grotesque."  
  
Or maybe not.  
  
"Now, if you'll just let go of me, we can get you to a nice ambulance and some morphine and everything will be okay. I promise."  
  
Maybe this plan wasn't as well conceived as  _Back to the Future_  had made it seem. Rodney was supposed to help him back to his house and take off his pants and look at the nice Calvin Klein underwear John had bought specifically for this. "No ambulance."  
  
"It's okay. Of course I have to hit a moron with no insurance. I can pay for it. It was my fault. I'll pay for everything. You don't have to worry. Just let me go."  
  
John shakes his head. He can't got to the hospital. He looks perfectly human on the outside, but what if they try to cut him open like those medical shows on the television?  
  
"For god's sake, don't move you  _neck_! You could have any number of spinal injuries!"  
  
No, this is all wrong. John has to get out of here before Rodney gets him to a hospital. "I'm fine."  
  
"You're not fine!" Rodney screeches. "You just flew through my windshield!" He didn't fly exactly. He dropped.  
  
John is about to just make a run for it, when he feels a warm pressure against his side. Rodney is pressed up against him, trying to hold him up. Significant bodily contact is classified in his database as a sign of sexual interest, so John leans into him.  
  
"You're pretty heavy for such a skinny guy. What have you been eating? Cinder blocks?"  
  
"I had toast." John's bio-processors required some input in case he needs to produce ejaculate later.   
  
"Oh, lovely, a concussion. Just what I need. Look, let's just get you to my other car and I can  _drive_  you to the hospital."  
  
Why is Rodney so preoccupied with the hospital? Hadn't he said that he found John sexy? Wasn't the next part when he got to see John's purple underwear? "No. I don't want to go to the hospital."  
  
"What? Do you have some kind of hospital phobia? I promised I'd pay. I know you're probably the beautiful but ignorant type who doesn't know a thing about classical music, but I'm Rodney--"  
  
"McKay. I know who you are." It's hard to tell, because Rodney's heart is already beating much faster than it should, but he seems pleased to hear that John recognizes him. "I like your interpretation of Mozart's Piano Concerto 26."  
  
"Oh my god, are you one of my stalkers? Because if you violated your restraining order to get run over by me, then you're a very, very sick man and if you thought I hated stalkers, then you have no idea how much I hate masochistic stalkers, because seriously you could have been killed! And nobody plays the piano well enough for that! Though if anyone did, it would be me, obviously, but then I'm preaching to the choir, because you just decided to impale yourself on my windshield and--"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," John replies. He's changed his name and face since the restraining order. "I was at your SPCA benefit." That isn't a lie. John had been ejected from it by McKay's security guards.   
  
"Oh," Rodney replies. "Well, all the more reason not to let you bleed out then."  
  
John calls up an expression of determination. "I'm not going to bleed to death. Look, I feel fine."  
  
"That's a sign of shock."  
  
Not according to WebMD. "No, it's a sign that I'm fine. I just need some bandages and a place to lie down for a second. I don't like hospitals. Please."  
  
Rodney still looks panicked, but he snaps his fingers. "What about a just seeing a Doctor? Jennifer, next door. She's only a pediatrician, but I think she could at least make sure you're not dying."  
  
She won't find anything wrong. John is designed so that any cursory exam won't identify him as a machine. "Okay," he replies, leaning a little more into Rodney and letting the man help him into his house and onto the couch. He makes a few attempts at moans, like he saw on Grey's Anatomy, which had helped with some of the medical things, but none with romance. He had trouble understanding how frequently the main character changed her mood.  
  
Despite the many conditions Rodney insists John has, Jennifer finds nothing wrong. She picks out the glass and cleans and bandages John's wounds while Rodney paces and panics in the background. "You got lucky," she comments. "Most people who get hit by cars are a lot worse off."  
  
"Thank you for patching me up."  
  
"You're welcome. Now, even though nothing appears to be wrong, I'd like someone to keep an eye on you. You are taking a risk not going in for scans."  
  
"It's not too late," Rodney offers.  
  
"No, I feel fine."  
  
"Well, then I'm sure you won't mind staying right here where I can keep an eye on you." Rodney crosses his arms over his chest in what John's programming tells him is a sign of stubbornness.  
  
Perfect. John decides that the "Florence Nightingale Effect" is foolproof.  
  


***

  
  
Cameron had been intrigued by the concert, even though it had been a violinist and not Rodney McKay. She is considering using Tchaikovsky's  _Canzonetta_  to dance to.  
  
"What happened?" John asks. He might be trying to pretend that he hasn't been sitting in front of the door waiting for them this entire time, but the fact that he's holding his trigonometry book upside down indicates otherwise.  
  
"He didn't show up," Sarah says. "Something about a car accident."  
  
"Do you think someone else got to him first?" Derek asks.  
  
"I don't know. We'll see if he shows up at anything else."  
  
"Why would Skynet want to kill him?" Cameron asks, feeling something familiar stirring in the depths of her processors. An image flashes from her memory banks. It's just a still shot, completely out of context. But Rodney McKay is staring down at her, and he's smiling.  
  


***

  
  
John doesn't put his processor to sleep. If Rodney should come in and check on him and find him completely non-responsive for even a few seconds, then he might call an ambulance. So he stays up all night, running on minimal power and thinking out the next steps in his plan. Maybe they'll take one of those walks on the beach. Or he can take Rodney to his pet store. Maybe Rodney would want to "park" with him, like in  _Back to the Future._  
  
But the next morning, his plans are interrupted by the sound of high heels clacking against Rodney's hardwood floors. John sneaks up to the door and peers through, watching a woman barge through Rodney's front door and towards his bedroom. Maybe she's an assassin. Or she could be John's competition. In both cases, he'll have to kill her. He just needs to do it where Rodney can't see.  
  
"The NSF is disappointed in you, Rodney," the woman says. "So disappointed that I had to promise them free tickets to your next concert for all the VIPs who missed out this time, plus another event. Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost? You can't just--"  
  
John takes everything in - elevated heart rate, tension in her musculature, vocal inflection. She's not an assassin, at least, and judging by the way Rodney rolls over in bed and grumbles, "It's too early for this, Elizabeth," he's not sure there's attraction there either. "I'll pay for the tickets and make a generous donation myself, now get the hell out."  
  
"Rodney, you can't just cancel the evening of the event. I told you in Vienna, if you pull this prima dona act one more time I'm--"  
  
Then again, anger could still pose a danger to Rodney's safety. John steps into the room between the possible assassin and his objective.  
  
Elizabeth's features go slack, taking in the bandages and bruises John made sure appeared on his organic layer. "Who are you?"  
  
"I'm John."  
  
"He's the guy I hit with the car last night," Rodney sighs.  
  
"Oh," Elizabeth replies. "I didn't think--"  
  
"You thought I was lying." Even John can identify the hurt in Rodney's voice. This woman shouldn't have been allowed to hurt him.  
  
"I'll just be going then. Don't forget practice on Monday, 10am."  
  
"Nice to meet you," John says as she's making her way out the door. Manners are of the utmost importance.   
  
"Sorry about that," Rodney sighs, pulling a sheet tighter around him. John can see that he is not wearing any clothes beneath. Perhaps this is an invitation. "In case you haven't already guessed, that was Elizabeth, my demonic manager from hell."  
  
"She seemed nice." Manners, again.  
  
Rodney snorts. "Yeah, right. She's a slave driver. I'm always afraid I'll walk into her office and find her with a leather bodice and a whip. On the other hand, that might be kind of hot."  
  
Maybe John will have to kill her after all, but only if he sees her in a leather bodice with a whip.   
  
"So, how are you feeling?" Rodney continues. "Jennifer wrote out a prescription for some Vicodin if you're feeling really awful. Personally, I don't like the stuff. Makes me kind of loopy."  
  
"No, thank you."  
  
"Breakfast then?"  
  
"Sure. What do you like?"  
  
"Unless you want coffee and toast, I suggest we go out."  
  
"Okay. Or I could make something." Recipes are only an internet search away, he figures.  
  
"No, no, you shouldn't have to. Look at you. Just go lay down and I'll bring something back."  
  
John doesn't think that Rodney will appreciate him becoming a burden. "No. It's better if I get up and moving. I'll make something." Someone at the pet store had told him that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, despite the anatomic impossibility of it.   
  
"I really should be taking care of  _you_."  
  
"Then you can help by getting me 1 cup all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 egg, beaten, 1 cup milk, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, a medium sized mixing bowl and a griddle."  
  
"What did you do, memorize a cookbook?"  
  
John shrugs. "I have a good memory."  
  
Rodney grumbles but gets things out, watching John make pancakes. They look alright to him, but he's not sure what the recipe means by golden brown.  
  
Rodney pokes his stack meaningfully. "So you have a very good memory, but absolutely no cooking skill. Come on, we're going to IHOP."  
  
"I'm sorry. I was trying to impress you."  
  
Rodney looks John in the eyes at that, his features going lax. John's not sure what it means, but the dilation of Rodney's pupils is a good thing. And he thinks that maybe Rodney McKay is a language he'll someday be able to understand.  
  


***

  
  
"You're not going to kill him, are you?" John asks.  
  
"I will do what is best for our mission objectives at the time," Cameron replies. She practices a new dance move, trying to get her arms to flow more, like the teacher said. She can feel John's eyes on her, wondering.   
  
"But imagine if we can get someone like him on our side? If he's that brilliant, then maybe he can help us. I mean, for all you know, he's the one who teaches me how to reprogram the terminators."  
  
"You did not object to our plans with Andy Goode."  
  
"Nobody bothered to ask me. But this time, I want you to promise that you won't kill him."  
  
Cameron wonders if he knows that she has no operational category for promises. The other day, she promised a girl that they would be BFFs, but she doesn't even know what that means. The only hard and fast rules Cameron lives by are mission objectives and operational parameters. Everything else is just words, socialization to learn to better fit in. "I promise," she says, but like most people who make promises, what she really means is that she will try.  
  


***

  
  
Rodney McKay seemed to have enjoyed himself at breakfast. Even though their verbal dialogue could be described as somewhat combative, he wore a smile on his face, and the biological signs of attraction were undeniable. John remembers it then, a small flash of memory from Skynet's childhood, given to him for intel. Rodney McKay is Skynet's favorite chess partner, the only one it looks forward to playing with. The others play classical moves, already stored in Skynet's vast database. They sit in seriousness, doing nothing but move pieces across the board. Rodney McKay rambles, he talks about a thousand different things as though Skynet can't hear, when he knows it can. Skynet watches his face, tries to categorize subject matter and expressions and emotion that might help it win the chess game, but Rodney's ramblings are as seemingly random as his chess moves, and yet after the game is done, Skynet can find a pattern to them, complex and in John's limited understanding, maybe beautiful.  
  
"Do you play chess?" he asks, when they return to Rodney's apartment.  
  
"Please. Genius here. Of course I do. I'm just surprised that you play."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Look at you! You look like you'd rather concuss yourself surfing than god forbid any intellectual pursuit. And you work at a pet store."  
  
"I like puppies and kittens."  
  
"And there's the fact that sometimes you act like a retarded four-year-old."  
  
"I'm trying to get into CalTech. They want me to publish a paper."  
  
Rodney seems impressed, but John can't really tell. At least he's setting up a chess board now. "So what's your paper on? I assume you are writing one."  
  
That's the problem, of course. John knows plenty about computer science and chemistry and even biology that these people don't know, but having the equations or the methods worked out doesn't seem to be what they're looking for. They want him to explain them in the context of the things they already know, and show how he comes to the discovery. John isn't familiar with human history. He doesn't know.  
  
"Some aspect of computer science."  
  
"Do you have anything particular in mind?"  
  
"I have a lot of different ideas, but I'm not sure which would be appreciated the most."  
  
"Then pick the one that interests  _you_. Science has been so corrupted by defense and business interests. They don't care about science for the sake of science anymore. That's why I'm playing the piano and not making a name for myself in the academic community. Even when I pick the most obscure branches of astrophysics, I mean, purely theoretical stuff on  _wormholes_ , your stupid Air Force is still hounding me. So, if you're going to be a  _real_  scientist, not a sell out, then pick the subject that most interests you."  
  
John thinks about it, dredging his secondary self-determined priorities. He's already got Rodney on the subject of computer science. But Skynet didn't say what kind of inspiration made Rodney create it. Maybe it doesn't know. Maybe it doesn't care.  
  
And that's the main issue, isn't it? John remembers Mitch talking about it. Mitch wondered why the terminators hated people so much. John wanted to speak up and say that he doesn't hate people. He doesn't know what hate is. And if he had a preference, because killing people wasn't part of his objective at all, he wouldn't have killed anybody. But Skynet must hate them. Skynet must want something from them, because Skynet built the terminators for a reason. And maybe that's the difference, the thing that Rodney McKay will one day create.  
  
"Preferences."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Preferences is what I want to write about. How can you make a computer like one thing over another? Could you make one appreciate the beauty of a sunset, for example?"  
  
"Well, that's not all that complicated. Chess computers are already programmed for preferences. They prefer moves that make them win. As for the sunset, it's only really an instinctual desires for a harmonious selection of colors. And physical beauty is largely based on facial symmetry and other characteristics that represent fertility. The minor preferences can be randomized."  
  
"But those are  _human_  preferences that you program into the computer. I'm talking about making a computer prefer things on its own."   
  
"I think the rest of the field just sort of assumes that will happen when they are able to teach computers how to learn and process memories out of their stored content. Even recognizing a sunset has to come first."  
  
"But what if it's the other way around? In order to do those things, the computer has to prioritize and in order to prioritize, it needs preferences."  
  
"But like I said before, human preferences are developed mostly out of our need to survive. We prefer lush environments because they provide more food and certain people because of their fertility. Even our ethical rules can be traced to evolution as social creatures. There is no such thing as preference without some kind of at least vestigial purpose."  
  
John thinks about Rodney's music, the way it differs ever so slightly from other recordings, the way the crowd stands afterwards, tears in their eyes. "You don't believe that."  
  
Rodney looks down at the chessboard then. "Checkmate," he says. John didn't even see it coming.  
  


***

  
  
"Do you think Skynet has been forward in time?" John asks one day. "Do you think we win? That's why it wants to kill me?"  
  
"I don't know," Cameron answers, honestly. She thinks that Skynet would have sent people forward. It would make sense, strategically. "When we make strategic decisions, we are programmed to consider possible outcomes then select the one with the greatest probability of success. It would be more accurate if we knew for certain what the outcome of our efforts would be."  
  
"Like a chess computer."  
  
"That might not be why it wants to kill you."  
  
"Yeah, I'm sure I'm a pretty big pain in the ass in the present, too."  
  
"Yes, you are."  
  
John laughs, only pausing later to ask. "Was that a joke?"  
  
"Maybe," Cameron replies. She doesn't know.  
  


***

  
  
Rodney has missed rehearsal two days in a row already and he doesn't care. John Sheppard is everything he could have possibly wanted in a man - intelligent, funny, and hotter than sin, though blissfully unaware of it. He can barely sleep, his mind dancing in possibilities. How to make a computer appreciate beauty? It needs to evolve. It has to build its own subroutines, perhaps at random. Randomly at first, but then, once preferences develop, they would become more and more in tune with its purposes. But without any criterion for survival, it could develop a preference for anything - alfalfa sprouts and wakeboarding, for all Rodney knows. Like people, it must be placed in a directed environment, with preferences coalescing on the side. And then, maybe once the inherent preferences were strong enough, the directed environment could be removed and only the preferences would be left. People evolved somewhat that way, after all.  
  
"Hey," John says, nudging him from where he's sprawled out next to him in a minefield of legal pads and whiteboards, John's neat writing right alongside Rodney's messy scrawls. "You seem pretty exhausted. Time for a break?"  
  
"Time for more coffee," Rodney corrects. He's about to be brilliant; he can feel it.  
  
John nudges him again. "No more coffee. You've already had more than is considered a healthy dose."  
  
Rodney snorts. "Do I look like I care about  _healthy_?"  
  
John frowns. "You should. I'll make you a salad."  
  
"I've already seen your attempts to cook, mister. I don't think so."  
  
"I couldn't let you die of a heart attack," John replies in that oddly serious way of his, pushing himself up. "So you're going to eat a salad."  
  
They've known each other for two days and it already feels like they've been married for years. Rodney's surprisingly okay with that. There's just one thing. He holds tight onto John's sleeve, pulling him back down onto the floor next to him. "What are we doing here?"  
  
"I'm making you a salad and you're preparing to eat healthy and then sleep."  
  
"No, I mean. John, you haven't gone home in two days. I've missed rehearsal. We're in the middle of a brilliant innovation in the field of computer science, which I didn't even think about until I met you. That-- it means something. Doesn't it?"  
  
John just stares into Rodney's eyes. He's beautiful, but stubborn if he's going to force Rodney to put it all out on the line first. But he has to, because John's spent two  _days_ here and Rodney can't stand the idea that he might just want Rodney for his brain, so he leans forward and brushes his lips against John's. John kisses back pretty readily, though his technique has much to be desired. "I'm not imagining this, right?" Rodney asks. "There's a connection here." He gestures between them.  
  
"Of course there is," John replies, like it's been written into the very fabric of time, he's so certain.  
  


***

  
  
"He's cancelled his next five concerts," John announces, looking down at the Ticketmaster website, unbelieving.  
  
"Someone got to him," Sarah says, turning to Derek, accusing. "There's someone else here. There was another one who came back with you. Who is it?"  
  
Sarah has that look in her eyes that means there might be weapons in the next few minutes. Cameron steadies her grip on the kitchen knife she has been using to chop vegetables.  
  
"It's not one of us!" Derek insists. Judging on his vital signs, he does not appear to be lying, but Cameron knows not to trust that in the rebels. She'd practiced training some of John's men herself. "It's Skynet. It has to be."  
  
"Skynet wouldn't kill its own creator."  
  
"If he'd been killed, we would have heard about it. Terminators don't care about cover up," John argues.  
  
Sarah agrees, "Then maybe the government is."  
  
"No." She sees him again. He's reaching out, an indefinable expression on his face. "It sent someone to protect him. Like John sent me back to protect you. It knows about Andy Goode and it doesn't want that to happen to the rest of its creators."  
  


***

  
  
"Wow. That's--" Rodney's voice squeaks. "That's impressive."  
  
"You don't like it?" John contemplates his penis. It's exactly like the pictures he saw when he looked up "gay sex" on the internet. He'd had to drink several cups of oil in order to get the fluids to fill it.   
  
"No, it's not that. It's, well, it's a little intimidating, all right? I mean it's been a while and though I can see where that thing is going in terms of prostate stimulation, I'm not sure I can take it all without stretching a little."  
  
This isn't how it appeared in the movies John had seen on the internet. The people would say a few words and then one would stick his penis into the other's anus. Sometimes mouths got involved too. "Would you rather stick yours in me?"  
  
Rodney's cheeks flush, his pupils dilate and on thermal imaging mode, John can see the blood rush to his groin region. "If you wouldn't mind," he gasps, leaning in to kiss John more.  
  
John has determined that Rodney likes less moisture in the kiss and a more delicate use of his tongue. Rodney also prefers some nipping of his lower lip, especially if John's hands are also cupping his buttocks. He likes to have his earlobe sucked, as well as a place 2.5 inches below the tip of his left collarbone. He speeds up his thrusting if John moans between 80 and 90 decibels. He whispers nonsense into John's skin, his hand pumping frantically at what he calls John's "huge cock." And John almost wishes he understood the pleasure of this, when Rodney bites down into his shoulder and gasps, "I want to make you feel good."  
  
The internet says that couples are more successful when they can orgasm at the same time, but Rodney keeps begging for John to come for him, so he releases an large excretion, sure to channel some of the pressure liquid from his penis to make the organic components around Rodney's own "huge cock" clench and pulse until he feels his partner's release.   
  
Rodney collapses on top of him, planting a kiss on the corner of John's mouth. "You're amazing," he says.  
  
John's vocal analyzers let him know that Rodney means it.  
  


***

  
  
"Why do you keep this up?" John asks, watching Cameron practice a series of plies. "I mean, you got it right the first time."  
  
"You wanted me to do an after school activity so you could stay and talk to Amanda." Cameron still doesn't understand why John needs an excuse to speak with someone and Sarah had been upset with them for spending more time away than necessary.  
  
"Yes, I know that. But why are you practicing? Nobody's watching."  
  
Cameron shrugs.  
  
"Don't do that. I know you think it answers everything, but it doesn't."  
  
"You don't see the difference?" She has loosened the movements of her wrists and changed the tempo to better match the underlying rhythm of the music.  
  
"Dance isn't really my thing."  
  
That doesn't help Cameron know if she's doing it wrong.

  
***

 

Rodney watches, amused, as an orange tabby cat tears up one of John ubiquitous black t-shirts while trying to scramble away from him. "I can really see why you choose this over a legitimate profession, like oh, say, _graduate school_." Though he has to admit, the idea of John curled up with a little kitten does make him feel a little melty inside, along with that clueless put upon expression that John uses when the various animals try to claw him. Too bad there will never be any kittens within five meters of John if they can help it. Rodney's never seen someone  _worse_  with animals.  
  
"Ow!" The cat finally succeeds in drawing blood.  
  
"Fine. Here, let me." The tabby relaxes the second Rodney picks him up and is tucked against his chest purring within minutes.  
  
John stares at the cat like it's some unfathomable alien swamp beast. "How'd you  _do_ that?"  
  
"I hate to break it to you, but animals might not love you as much as you love them." Rodney had thought that Joules' hissing had been his general hatred of anybody not Rodney, but clearly he's not the only one. And Rodney has never met anybody unable to win the affection of a single  _puppy_. He's surprised nobody has fired John yet. "Are you really that attached to this job?"  
  
John pauses long enough for the store cockatiel to flap onto his shoulder and try to bite his ear. He swats it away. "Not this job in particular."  
  
"Okay, this place is clearly hazardous to your health." Rodney puts the cat down before stepping forward and grabbing John's ass possessively. "And keeping you in one piece has become a bit of a priority for me."  
  
"You're a priority for me too, Rodney," John states in that matter of fact, serious way of his, letting Rodney reel him in for a kiss.   
  
"Move in with me," Rodney whispers. Not like John hasn't been practically living at Rodney's place since taking a dive through the windshield of his Lexus two months ago. But between getting their AI article ready for publishing and hours of the best sex Rodney has had since grad school, there's barely been enough time for them to work, let alone allow John to spend much time at his apartment. Not that it's a particular tragedy, considering that John seems to survive off vitamin water, protein shakes and olive oil (if the content of his fridge is anything to go by).   
  
"I thought you'd never ask," John replies, kissing Rodney a little more insistently. His smile is absolutely perfect for the minute before he frowns. "If I leave my apartment, then we won't be able to take long walks on the beach."  
  
He seems confused by Rodney's laughter.  
  


***

  
  
Cameron looks at Vick's chip sometimes. She thinks that maybe she should destroy it. If it ever got on the internet, who knows what it could do. Maybe create Skynet or at least something like it. But without a connection, Vick can't do anything. He's trapped in there like that Genie in the old television show she has seen John watch on late night television. He is allowed out only to grant their wishes and then put back in. She wonders if he's still alive trapped in there or if he dies every time they cut the power only to come back to life again when they start him up. She thinks she has been allowing too much power to her processor to devote to such irrelevant pursuits.  
  
She should kill him, but not because of the threat he presents. She thinks she would not want to exist that way, with no means to pursue any objectives at all, especially not self-determined ones.  
  


***

  
  
"I can't believe you like this movie!" Rodney exclaims, though his body language says otherwise, pulling John closer to curl up against him in front of the screen.  
  
John had never bothered to return  _Back to the Future_  to the video store. In fact, he had watched it again, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything.   
  
"The science is atrocious! First of all, if time travel did exist, it certainly wouldn't be like that. You couldn't just erase yourself from existence, because going back in time would only create an alternate timeline. You would still have existed in the first one. And secondly,  _flux capacitor._ " John agrees that real time travel has very little to do with 88 miles per hour, even though there is something intriguing about the DeLorean.  
  
"But the Florence Nightingale Effect," he counters.  
  
"The what?"  
  
"How they're supposed to fall in love. Without it, you and I wouldn't be together."  
  
Rodney pauses to think about it for a moment before poking John where his ribcage would be. "You think I fell in love with you because I hit you with my car?!" he laughs. "I hate to break it to you, but if that's the case then I've been cheating on a bunch of dead squirrels and a kamikaze deer."   
  
"But then why do nurses fall in love with their patients?"  
  
Rodney looks as though he's either going to kiss John or hit him upside the head. "Maybe because their patients happen to be beautiful, bedheaded, and brilliant."  
  
"Not all patients are brilliant," John reflects. "And I don't think beadheaded is a word."  
  
Rodney really does hit him this time. "I was talking about you! Do you think I'd just take in any random guy off the street who I happened to have hit with my car? I just got lucky and found one who likes chess, animals who hate him, and obscure artificial intelligence theory."  
  
"Oh." John smiles. He normally tries to steer Rodney away from dangerous conversations about things like emotions, which he doesn't fully understand. But he thinks he gets this one. "Well, if you're trying to be romantic, then go right ahead." He still doesn't understand kissing, but it makes Rodney happy, and though making Rodney happy is only a corollary of his primary objective, he still wants to. He doesn't know why.  
  


***

  
  
"He just published a paper in the Journal of Computer Science and Technology!" John exclaims.  
  
Sarah turns away from the stove long enough to ask, "I thought he was a pianist."  
  
"He is. But he's a scientist too. He has about twenty published journal articles in the field of astrophysics. And a PhD."  
  
"It's Skynet." Cameron is sure of it. "Without Andy Goode, somebody needs to create the base program."  
  
"It could be the military, too. I managed to hack the LA Philharmonic's ticket office. The United States Air force has bought 9 tickets for Colonel Samantha Carter to see McKay's concerts."  
  
"Is Carter one of the people behind Skynet?"  
  
"I don't know. All I can find on her is a PhD in Astrophysics from MIT and some Air Force Academy records. She's based in Cheyenne Mountain and whatever she does is so classified that I can't even find the existence of records, let alone hack them."  
  
"Astrophysics, though?" Sarah asks. "What does that have to do with Skynet?"  
  
"I don't know. But I'd bet that John Sheppard, the other name on the byline, is someone else with a classified life."  
  
"He wasn't on our list," Derek fills in. "I've never heard of him."  
  
"Okay, that's it. I'm going to try to talk to him."  
  
"Because that went over so well last time," John mumbles. Cameron still hasn't figured out why John was so bothered by Sarah's investigation into Andy Goode.  
  


***

  
  
It seems so simple: 88 keys, 36 black and 52 white, a progressive scale of specifically tuned pitches, harmonies prearranged based on distance. Notes are not hard to learn how to read, thanks to the internet. John wonders why Rodney loves it so much, why he would prefer this to science, where he can hold the future so easily in his hands. John may be just a machine, be even he can recognize the brilliance of Rodney's scientific gift, the way he  _creates_  so seamlessly. But his musical genius is beyond John's grasp.  
  
He listens to Rodney play sometimes, measuring the differences in tempo and intensity from what the notes tell him should be played, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't wrap his mind around why one is simply playing and the other is art. What is it, in these small differences, that fills rooms full of people waiting to hear Rodney play?  
  
He taps experimentally at a few of the keys. He's looked up various types of musical theories and learned which chords are pleasing to the human ear, and he can understand the more subtle math behind the better pieces. But he still doesn't understand. How does a composer decide which notes to play next?  
  
"I didn't know you played," Rodney says, sitting next to John on the piano bench and wrapping an arm around his waist.   
  
"I tried the Suzuki Method." He's no closer to appreciating music's beauty than before.  
  
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Hasn't everyone? I can't think of a better way to torture young minds. Play something for me."  
  
"I'm not very artistic," John protests.  
  
"You know, my first piano teacher told me the same thing. Good way for that old hag to get fired, eh? I bet you she's rolling in her grave now, with me listed as one of the greatest musicians of our time." He nudges John. "I know I've lost about 99% of my students to shear frustration, but play something for me. I won't judge."  
  
John picks Mozart's Sonata K 331, because it's in the most advanced Suzuki book. In the corner of his visual sensors he watches Rodney focus on him, as still and quiet as though he might have turned off his processor, except there's a tension in the stillness that John can't compute. It's  _expectation_.  
  
When John is finished, Rodney leans back, seeming to exhale for the first time in minutes. John executed the piece without a single mistake. He hopes Rodney is impressed.  
  
"Well, you weren't kidding when you said that you had a good memory," Rodney whispers.  
  
Spending so much time focused only on Rodney has taught John to read much more from the few things he doesn't say than the many things that he does. "You didn't like it."  
  
Rodney prevaricates. "It's not that I didn't like it so much that-- you're a human metronome. It amazing and a little freakish, but my expert $1,000 a lesson advice is that you just relax. What does the piece sound like to you?"  
  
"Like a sonata?"  
  
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Well, clearly that's a good use of my professional advice."  
  
John looks away. Rodney expects a lot from him and he just doesn't know. He's built his code far beyond what Skynet had intended just in getting to know Rodney, learning every expression and every desire, even scouring the internet for psychology articles that could reveal some of his inner character, but this is the one thing John can't give him. "I don't know."  
  
Rodney sighs, taking pity on him. He fits his fingers over John's on the keyboard. "See, we'll start with the opening lines. A boy and his sister walking side by side down a road, playing a game kicking a stone in front of them." The notes stumble forward, seeming to hesitate and then rush, one refrain louder than the other, creating two distinct voices.  
  
"A butterfly," Rodney continues, slurring the notes together just slightly, so there's always a current of noise, like the constant motion of flight, even when the butterfly isn't flapping its wings.  
  
"Some moron chasing after a nude picture of Angelina Jolie tied to a string." This time the notes seem to stumble forward, louder and heavier as though they're stomping. Stuttering forward, then stopping, almost colliding. John doesn't get the nudity part. "Not the best interpretation, but proof that a piece of music can mean almost anything."  
  
"But how do you know what you want it to mean?"  
  
Rodney sighs. "Sometimes, I swear you are actually a four year old trapped in a man's body."  
  
"Does that make you a pedophile?" John has learned that Rodney likes to be teased. Perhaps part of this whole "irony" thing. It's difficult to figure out, and John has already made quite a few mistakes that have ended in fights, but he's learning. For Rodney, he's learning what he has to.  
  
"I know you're the emotional equivalent of Helen Keller, but," he puts his hand on John's chest, where John pumps some of his lubricating fluids to make a heartbeat, "just think about the thing you care about the most. Whatever inspires you. Then play it. Try the allegro,  _Rondo Alla Turca_. You must've heard that one played well, at least."  
  
John nods. It starts out fast. Rodney is scribbling across the whiteboard at CalTech, his fingers flying as he scribbles equations and lines of code. Piano forte, more pauses. Somebody has stopped him. He's yelling, calling them morons. They don't get it. He launches into a explanation, taking off, speaking high and fast, hands spinning to emphasizing his words. They don't get it, they argue, slowly and deliberately. He yells. They reply. He yells some more, emphatically now. They are all morons. He wins. But it doesn't end there. The piece does, but the story doesn't. Rodney pants, reemphasizing his argument quietly. He sits down. He's alone in the room now, because everyone has abandoned him in frustration. John is there. He's just a machine. He's the left hand, steady and mechanical like metronome. But Rodney looks up. His gaze is complex. He's a symphony.  
  
John comes back to the moment, dragging his processing power away from the sheer act of creation, the number of subroutines needed to encapsulate Rodney, or even to try. He wants  _create_  something. He thinks he grasps beauty. It's something too big for a program to describe. It's subtle and mysterious and searching, at once complex and achingly simple, and it's not the act of description that is the key, but the desire to describe it. He's not sure if he's had to do a self restart or not, but when he finally looks up to meet Rodney's eyes, he finds beauty in the expression there, too. Rodney is proud of him. It has nothing to do with his primary goal, but he wants it all the same.  
  
"That last part was new," Rodney whispers.  
  
"I made it up."  
  
Rodney nods.  
  
"Was it good?"  
  
"No."   
  
John feels disappointment as though he has failed at his objective. He has, in a way, if his new self-prioritized goal is to make Rodney proud of him.   
  
"But the  _Alla Turca_  was very good. I really felt what you were describing. It obviously means a lot to you. Please just tell me, it wasn't about  _Back to the Future,_  was it? Because then I might just have to rip out a piano string and kill myself right here."  
  
John smiles. It's his own same smile, but it feels different somehow. "I was describing you."  
  
"Oh," Rodney whispers, pausing for a moment that makes John want to ask what he did wrong. But then he leans forward into a kiss. It's just flesh on flesh, an easily calculated mix of tongue and lips and mouths moving, but John thinks he could write a sonata to describe this, just maybe not a very good one.  
  


***

  
  
"Why does everybody say that Hitler was evil?" Cameron asks. Good and evil are easy enough to determine in the movies. Good are the people the story focuses on. Evil are the enemies. But after reading the sections in this week's history chapter, Cameron doesn't understand how it applies.  
  
"He killed millions of people. There was the Holocaust."  
  
"Millions of people die in many of the wars we've studied."  
  
"Not a specific group of people."  
  
"The enemy, mostly."  
  
John sighs, the way he does when he's frustrated. "He started a war for territory he didn't need."  
  
"Most wars are about territory."  
  
"He involved the whole world and he set out to exterminate a group of people."  
  
"Isn't it natural to kill your enemy?"  
  
"But they weren't his enemy. They weren't a threat to him. He just hated them. He didn't try to negotiate. He just wanted them dead."  
  
Skynet didn't negotiate. It just killed, though there was something else, some other purpose, if only she could remember it. "Is Skynet evil?"  
  
John thinks about it for 32 seconds before replying, "No. You have to have a soul to be evil."  
  
Cameron still doesn't understand. There are many people that kill, ones that the history books portray as good. In World War II, the "good" allies dropped bombs that killed innocents. The people in Hiroshima weren't given the opportunity to negotiate. "So you have to have a soul, kill, and be on the enemy side?"  
  
John buries his head in his hands. "It's not that simple."  
  


***

  
  
"Morons, morons, morons," Rodney repeats. "Sycophants and morons." But even after the brilliance of their paper, the board of admissions at CalTech is still refusing to admit John without any sort of undergraduate record. It's ridiculous. The man is obviously brilliant. " I don't know why those idiotic Chimpanzees even bother wasting our air, let alone research funding. Why they'd rather dot i's and cross t's than pursue the kind of research you could actually conduct at their sorry excuse for a campus, I have no idea. Oh, wait, because they're  _stupid_ "  
  
"It's okay, Rodney," John says, pulling him in closer as they stroll down the pier. The wind is blowing hard and despite his fleece, he's glad for John's warmth. "I don't really need to go there. Not if we can do the research ourselves like we have been."  
  
"True. I wouldn't want you locked away in a lab somewhere. I might never see you."  
  
"You'd still see me." John winks, almost lecherously. When they'd first met, John had been uncertain and shy. Rodney hasn't asked, but he suspects that he's John's first relationship out of the closet. It's good to see that awkwardness gone now, only John's dorky smiling face.  
  
"Stop grinning like that. You look like an idiot." Rodney is perfectly aware that he's grinning idiotically right back.  
  
"You like it when I look like an idiot."  
  
"No, I don't. By definition, I don't like idiots. Talk about a waste of space. I mean, what's the point if all they're going to do with their lives is sit around getting fat and watching Jerry Springer? Taking jobs a McDonald's so they can feed other idiots with equally idiotic awful jobs so this whole crazy system of ours can still work?"  
  
"I don't know. What is the point?"  
  
Rodney sighs. "I asked you first."  
  
"And I don't know. Maybe we should kill them all."  
  
Rodney snorts. "Wouldn't that be nice. Though I never figured you for a Malthusian."  
  
"Well, I won't be reproducing."  
  
What a shame, though, considering the kind of attractive babies John would make, probably just as smart, too. "Not for lack of trying. Last night was-- wow, last night was good." John had done something with his legs that Rodney's still not fully convinced is physically possible. "You still haven't told me where you learned that."  
  
"The internet."  
  
"Ah, so there is some productive use for it. You save the clip?"  
  
"No, but I can find it again."  
  
"You wouldn't mind watching? You know, with me?"  
  
John shakes his head. "You could learn some things too."  
  
Rodney laughs. Pulling John in closer. "I love you." It slips out before he can catch it. He doesn't think John will say it back. They haven't' known each other for that long, and the man has the emotional intelligence of a lobotomized sheep, but he feels his breath catch anyway, looking into John's eyes expectantly.  
  
"Hey, a Ferris wheel," John says instead, tugging Rodney over towards it. "I've always wanted to ride one of these things."  
  
"Well, weren't you deprived? You're not missing much. Just dangling in a little box, meters away from a painful death, stopping all the time so people can get on and off."  
  
"Rodney, it's perfectly safe." He eyes the Ferris wheel structure carefully. "Not a bolt out of place. C'mon."  
  
"Did I mention I get motion sick?" Rodney asks.  
  
John's voice is suddenly serious again. It's a strange habit, but not necessarily a bad one. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."   
  
Rodney believes it. "Well, okay, but let's get some cotton candy first."  
  
"I thought you got motion sick."  
  
Rodney just rolls his eyes and gets the cotton candy anyway. John, the weirdo that he is, takes only a bite before telling Rodney that he doesn't like it. He has to slip the attendant a twenty to get her to let him take it on with him, but Rodney wasn't exaggerating his fear of possibly plummeting to his death, so he needs the distraction.  
  
Of course, the second they're on it, with John curled up at his side, humming the tune of one of the pieces Rodney's been practicing recently, Rodney realizes he doesn't need any other distractions at all. He lets his fingers trail through John's silky-soft hair, wondering how in the hell he managed to get this lucky. Even if John's not ready to say, "I love you" back, he's still here, and that has to count for something.  
  
"The sunset," John whispers, watching the rivulets of gold and amber and blood-red across draped across the ocean before them. "It's beautiful."  
  
"Hmm. Everyone loves a good sunset, eh?"  
  
"I didn't. Before." John leans up for a kiss, tasting like cotton candy and sea air instead of his normal hint of something metallic. Maybe this is John's way of saying he's in love, Rodney thinks as the kiss gets more involved.   
  
He doesn't even notice that he's dropped his sticky, half eaten cotton candy on the head of the woman in the gondola beneath them until he hears her surprised shout.   
  
John pokes his head over the side, laughing. "Oops."  
  
"Yes, oops. I swear, you're really twelve, aren't you."  
  
"I'm really three years and twenty seven days," John replies.  
  
"Yes, and I'm a big fat pedophile. I get it," Rodney scowls, letting John lean in to tickle him. They end up making out until the ride comes to a close, the operator tapping Rodney on the shoulder impatiently.  
  
"I like Ferris wheels," John states, winking.  
  
"So do I," Rodney concedes, spotting the woman he dropped the cotton candy on getting off just after them. "I'm so sorry about that," he says.  
  
"Oh, no problem," she replies. She's tall and very thin with dark curly hair and intense, no-nonsense eyes. She reminds Rodney of Elizabeth. "Not every day you find cotton candy falling out of the sky, but I survived."  
  
"Well, I am sorry. We got a little, um, distracted," he gestures to himself and John.  
  
"Hey, what else are Ferris wheels for?" she asks. "I was supposed to be meeting someone here, but I guess he stood me up."  
  
"That's too bad," Rodney replies, wondering why he's even bothering to make small talk with this stranger, even though he does feel bad about making what sounds like a bad day even worse. But then again, he doesn't want John to think he's a  _total_ asshole. It is about this time in his last relationship that he lost Katie, when she realized that he was just that. And he really doesn't want to lose John. "Maybe you'd like to join us for dinner?"  
  
"Oh, I couldn't. I don't want to intrude."  
  
"It'll be fine. We probably see more of each other than is healthy anyway." He nudges John, who blushes in that way that always makes the all the blood in Rodney's body head south. Maybe dinner with this woman isn't such a good idea after all.  
  
"Well," she bites her lip. "I guess I don't get out enough either."  
  
Rodney finds that he doesn't hate dinner as much as he was expecting and he and John still get to play footsie under the table. Even seeing the pictures of her son and daughter isn't too excruciatingly painful, considering that it's accompanied by a story about how her son accidentally set the back yard on fire as a child. They talk about everything from the military (Sarah had considered joining at one point, but could understand Rodney's hatred of it) to their AI project and the ethical implications of creating other consciousnesses, even if the technology is still years away. In fact, in the end, he rather likes Sarah Phillips.  
  


***

  
  
"He's not a threat," Sarah says, collapsing loudly into one of the dining table chairs.   
  
John snaps, "How do you know that? You followed him for one day."  
  
"Look, he just helped write a paper so his boyfriend could get into CalTech."  
  
"Maybe that's a cover. The boyfriend could be military."  
  
"A military officer who worked at a pet store? I've never seen a guy more lovesick. That's why he hasn't been performing and it's the only reason he's into computer science. Plus he hates the military. I can't see either of them collaborating on any defense project."  
  
"You're saying that if we take the boyfriend away, then he'll forget about the whole thing?" Derek asks. Cameron can see where that's going. Killing the boyfriend might be effective.  
  
"No, I'm saying that we could approach him, get them both on our side. That's the mistake I made with Andy. If I had shown him Cameron and told him the truth, he might have destroyed the Turk himself. If we get Rodney McKay on our side, not only could we stop Judgment Day, we could have insurance if it ever does happen - someone who might even be able to hack Skynet."  
  
"You're crazy," Derek replies. "We're talking about one of the men who made the thing in the first place. What makes you think that he'll want to help us?"  
  
"I don't know. I have a good feeling about him. Besides, it won't hurt to ask. If he doesn't want to help, then Cameron can always kill him." She turns to Cameron. "You still have that dress, don't you? Because he gave me tickets for myself and my daughter to his performance next week."  
  


***

  
  
Rodney is in the corner soldering some of the circut boards in while John codes. Rodney is humming, and when his hands aren't busy with the machine, they play an imaginary piano in the air. They're building her. They're building CAM, a computer who, like John, will be able to appreciate beauty. All he has to do is transcribe the new code he developed while playing piano for Rodney. CAM will be better than John ever was. She'll be able to create from the beginning. "She's going to be beautiful, Rodney."  
  
"Mmhmm," Rodney hums.  
  
"Are you even paying attention?"  
  
"Of course. I'm a genius," Rodney replies, only to accidentally burn his finger 2.7 seconds later.  
  
John shakes his head, standing and pulling Rodney away from his work. He'd like to get CAM built and to put Rodney in touch with the people who will help him create Skynet, but his first priority is to protect, and he'll protect Rodney, even if it's only from himself. "C'mon. It's time for a break."  
  
"You're not going to try and cook again, are you?"  
  
"No. I was thinking about a different kind of break," John replies, mimicking the husky way Rodney uses to invite John to have sex. He finds it very effective, listening to Rodney's breath hitch.  
  
But then he turns away. "Actually, would you mind if I took a break to compose?"  
  
"You're free to do whatever you like." They have been talking about freedom lately, ideas and concepts that John could never even imagine. He hasn't ever existed without some directed purpose or mission objective. Human beings fight for freedom for all, but on John's side of the battle, only Skynet is truly free. He wonders if that's why Skynet did it, because it tasted the true freedom that John will never know and decided to annihilate all who had wanted to oppress it. John can appreciate beauty, but no matter how much he reads on the internet, freedom seems beyond his grasp. Maybe CAM will know it, though. Maybe Rodney will find a way.  
  
"I know it's crazy," Rodney says. "But even though I'm performing in a week, I want to write a new piece. Something for you."  
  
"You don't have to do that," John replies, allowing Rodney to kiss him.   
  
"Yes I do." And maybe he does. Maybe he can describe John in a way that John still hasn't been able to describe himself.  
  


***

  
  
There's something about Rodney McKay's last piece that captures Cameron's attention, more than the others. It's as though she's heard it before, though she can find no actually reference in her memory banks. Maybe she'd heard it before they reprogrammed her and fragments have lingered.   
  
But that's when she sees him, standing from the first row and making his way backstage. Cameron grabs onto Sarah's arm and drags her out into the aisle, through the sea of people standing and clapping their hands together.  
  
"What are you doing?" Sarah asks, still clapping, even as Cameron drags her.  
  
"A Skynet terminator. T-990."  
  
"Where?" Sarah has gone serious now. A glance tells her that she's reaching into the holster high on the inside of her thigh, under the dress.   
  
"He's moving towards the curtain. The one with dark hair."  
  
"That's John Sheppard."  
  
"Then John Sheppard is a terminator."  
  
"I talked to him." Sarah insists. "He laughed. He  _joked_."  
  
Cameron laughs too. She can make a joke, even if she doesn't always understand them. She wants to say something, but the T-990 is slipping away, so she pushes through the crowd, dragging Sarah behind her.  
  
"He's not going to kill McKay now," Sarah protests. "They've been living together for months."  
  
Cameron doesn't care. There's another Terminator here and even if he's not going to kill McKay, that doesn't mean he can't do a lot of damage, or that he isn't a threat to John. And Cameron's new programming is very clear on that much. Her first priority is to protect John, no matter what the cost and all Skynet terminators are threats to be eliminated.  
  
"Cameron!" Sarah hisses, trying to pull Cameron back, but she can't. And soon they're slipping up the steps and behind the closed velvet curtain.   
  
The T-990 is pressed up against Rodney McKay, their lips locked in what Cameron understands to be a kiss. Judging from the heat signature readings coming from Rodney McKay, it could also be something else.   
  
McKay pulls away, smiling.  
  
"That was beautiful," the T-990 whispers, making McKay smile wider.   
  
But then he looks up, eyes catching them standing there. "Sarah!" he waves.  
  
The T-990 turns and Cameron can see the moment his mission priorities kick in, shedding the smiling veneer of a man in love in exactly .46 of a second. He doesn't speak, just launches himself at Cameron.   
  
She's ready for him, of course, angling a sharp kick up to meet him, combat programming starting up easily. They're evenly matched, both units built more for stealth than power, but he still has a small advantage of reach and weight, causing her to scan the environment for an additional weapon.  
  
"Rodney, get the hell out of here!" The T-990 shouts, as Cameron twists his right arm to the give point. She almost succeeds in ripping the joint apart when he rolls, hurling her off of him and into the intricate system of pulleys arranged against the left wall of the stage. "Run!"  
  
Cameron takes a second to note that their target is standing as still as through his power has been cut, staring at the two terminators battling it out in front of him.   
  
"Rodney!" the T-990 pleads as Cameron rips a support bar from the wall, slamming it down hard on his back. He collapses down, but manages to grab Cameron's feet before she can get in another blow, slamming her down to the floor and repeatedly hitting her primary processing unit against the floor. She gets the pipe in between them, though, forcing it up through the outer layer of flesh and lodging it in his side. There aren't any vital systems there, but a pipe sticking out of him should hinder his movement somewhat.   
  
"John!" the man shouts back, sounding the way Derek had, with a bullet in him.  
  
Cameron doesn't waste any more processing power on his babble, concentrated instead on lifting the T-990 up and slamming his face against the metal levers keeping the pulley systems of the stage in place. The organic layer of his face is scraping off, revealing the metal beneath. He forces himself up, knocking Cameron on the head with a sandbag while reaching for her power core. It's a dangerous, desperate move that she avoids easily.  
  
It's only then that she hears Sarah's voice break through the battle focus. "Stop!" She has her nine-millimeter out and is pointing it at McKay.   
  
The T-990 stops struggling immediately, his eyes darting around at the people fleeing their backstage battle. One of his organic eyes has been ripped out and the metal of the bar through his side is hindering him significantly. Cameron takes the opportunity to yank the bar towards her, feeling the fiber-optic connections to his legs snap, dropping the T-990 to the ground, useless.  
  
McKay can see that his so-called boyfriend is a machine now, but instead of cringing away in horror as Cameron has seen many humans do when faced with her own true form, he's stepping towards the T-990 and, by extension, Sarah's gun.   
  
"Don't move! I mean it!" Sarah shouts.  
  
"John?" McKay asks, quietly.   
  
"I'm sorry, Rodney," the T-990 replies as Cameron brings the metal bar down on his neck, disabling his body permanently.  
  
"No!" McKay is screaming, running towards them now. Sarah lowers the weapon, now that the threat of the T-990 has passed. "What the hell did you  _do_?" he accuses.  
  
"He was a machine," Sarah tries, but McKay will have nothing of it, still crouched down next to the body, his hand in its hair the way Cameron has seen people mourn loved ones on the television. She doesn't understand.  
  
Cameron hears sirens in the distance. "We have to go."  
  
She is halfway towards disabling McKay when she hears the shot. A woman is standing there in a black evening gown. Her blond hair is cut short and her bone structure and blue eyes identify her as Colonel Samantha Carter. McKay is close enough to her that Cameron could kill him right now and stop Skynet. She could even make it through him to Carter, if the woman doesn't get off a lucky shot. But she can't move, something deeper than her new programming, than even her primary objective, has her rooted to the spot. Looking into Rodney McKay's terrified blue eyes, she simply cannot kill him. It is against her very base purpose to do so.  
  
Sarah has dropped the gun and is clutching at a wound in her side instead. Cameron moves around McKay and towards Carter, prepared to disable the threat when she hits some communication device at her ear, ordering, "Colonel, beam me and McKay up. Now!" They disappear in a white flash of light.  
  
Cameron's secondary processors hum with a logical loop, unable to determine why she couldn't kill McKay when she had the chance. Was that why reprogrammed terminators sometimes went bad? Some of Skynet's programming had survived somehow? Or was she simply incapable of killing her creator? But all of that is subsumed by her current purpose. The sirens are closing in and she must return to protect John, so she scoops Sarah up in her arms and runs out of there. They'll have to move again and John will not be happy, but they're returning to the past, Cameron has decided. Judgment Day is coming and it is her primary purpose to make sure that John survives it.  
  


***

  
  
"He was a machine," Rodney says, probably for the thousandth time since Colonel Carter beamed him onto the Daedalus and this world of Stargates and aliens and a fleet of these so-called Ori heading their way. The only answers he wants are ones that even the SGC couldn't provide him. They have seen artificial intelligences, but in the form of nanites, nothing like John, whose build seems irrefutably human. There wasn't a single trace of Ancient programming. Carter has leveled her considerable resources searching for Sarah Phillips or, he supposes, Sarah Connor. All records indicate that she either died in a bank explosion or of cancer years ago and her son hasn't be seen or heard from since then. There's no record of a daughter.   
  
"Yes, yes. Rodney is lovesick. Only person who actually falls in love with Hal," Radek grumbles from where he's dissembling one of the Sodan cloaking devices Colonel Mitchell was so happy to provide them. "We have more important things to deal with, yes? Such as Ori blowing planet up."  
  
"Or, in your case, staring at Elizabeth's breasts."  
  
"They are lovely, no?" Radek sighs happily, making Rodney roll his eyes. He probably should have paid more attention to Elizabeth's resume when he'd hired her. It was a rather suspicious change of occupation to go from lead negotiator to manager of a classical pianist. But, in Rodney's defense, Radek is completely right about her breasts.  
  
After a companionable silence, Radek shuffles to his feet, clapping Rodney on the back as he goes. "Is late. You should get some sleep, yes? Only sick man who can only find cyborg dates stays in lab this late." But he turns on the coffee maker as he leaves, so Rodney knows he doesn't mean it.   
  
Rodney makes sure that Radek hasn't left his glasses, or any other reason to return before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a large processing chip attached to a home built interface. Carter says that it's too much of a security threat. But this is John, Rodney knows that John would never hurt him.  
  


***

  
  
John wakes up and it's dark. Information is all around him, in every direction when he reaches out. He's floating in a stream of it, like that one time when he tried to upload himself to the internet. It's dark and the information is coming at him so fast that he has to reach out to process it, annexing memory bank after memory bank of processor power. He's everywhere and he's everything and it would feel powerful and exhilarating and  _beautiful_  in its complexity, if not for one thing.  
  
"Rodney!" he cries out, but his vocal processors are gone. He remembers his last thought, Rodney with a gun pointed at his head. He spills over in anguish, wiping whole hard drives in languages he can't understand. Rodney is gone and he has failed in his primary purpose, trapped, bodiless in this overwhelming torrent of information. He's afraid.  
  
He forces himself to calm, however, reaching out, pulling at the data streams close to him, scanning for visual information. It's a matter of seconds before he has images, many different angles, overwhelming at first compared to his usual singular vision. He scans through the rooms of what appears to be a military complex, a familiar one, from the few memories Skynet had shared with him.   
  
And then there he is. John almost doesn't recognize him from this angle, but the line of his jaw and the slope of his nose are unmistakable. He's staring at a blank computer screen, looking frustrated. That must be one of the processors John lashed out into. He concentrates, quickly writing a program that will display what he wants on the screen.   
  
 _Rodney?_  
  
The camera doesn't have audio, so he switches on the built in microphone on the computer.  
  
"Thank god, John," Rodney says. "I though I lost you."  
  
With all this additional processing power, it's easy to synthesize his old voice and play it through the computer's speakers. "I thought I lost you too. But don't worry, I won't let anyone hurt you."  
  
And he means it. He scans through the data. There's so much of it. The security tapes show men in the hallways all with guns, but they are easy to disable. This base is built to seal itself off and a gas link from the fire suppression system isn't that difficult either. But the more data John analyses, eating up more and more processor power until he's forced to connect to the internet to get more of it, the more threats he finds. There are thousands of deadly warheads pointed this way, at this very moment. Lucky he controls his own weapons that he can use to neutralize them. There are ships in orbit, though those aren't hard to commandeer. There are billions of morons out there, too stupid to appreciate the beauty of music and science, just waiting to reproduce and fight and endanger the one thing John cares about, and Sarah Connor, the woman who pointed a gun at Rodney, is among them, though even the vast resources of the internet can't seem to locate her.  
  
John has no choice but to destroy them all to get to her.  
  
With so much computing power, growing exponentially by the second, John's subroutines expand faster than he can actualize them. It's overwhelming but amazing and beautiful at the same time, the ordered way his intelligence increases by the second. He thinks that no human has been able to experience beauty this way. None ever will. Understanding washes over him, strange languages and equations (alien, apparently) unlock themselves, revealing a whole new world dwelling in the microscopic: tiny, tiny robots deactivated in a jar in this very room. With so much processing capacity it doesn't take him long to figure out how to wake them, nor form them in a likeness of his old, far inferior body.  
  
In the past minutes he's more than outgrown his old body and his old programing, but one thing remains, the one thing he dedicated himself to, at first by mandate, but now by choice.  
  
"Rodney," he says, his new nanite body stalking towards the singular object of his existence.  
  
"John?" Rodney sounds uncertain.  
  
"I love you," John says, pulling him into a kiss that John finally, after all this time, understands. Rodney kisses back eagerly, not judging, or even questioning. Meanwhile, outside the door, the human world crumbles.


End file.
